Tea Party: Dead On Arrival?

By Mande Wilkes || The emerging Tea Party – which bills itself as the nation’s answer to bipartisan fiscal irresponsibility – is spending itself into turmoil.

It’s the coming-out convention itself that’s threatening to upend the Party. Just days before the convention, Tea Party organizers and activists are withdrawing support amid charges of outrageous spending on the event.

A Tea Party convention billed as the coming together of the grass-roots groups that began sprouting up around the country a year ago is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about “profiteering.”

So is the Tea Party set to be just another party that undermines its own platform even as it holds it up as gospel? The only – only – thing the Tea Party’s got going for it is its declared commitment to fiscal restraint. Populism is its central tenet, and yet, at almost $600 per ticket, the average American is excluded from the convention.

So-named for its pledge to reacquaint the country with its roots, already the Tea Party organizers have lost touch with those very ideals. Rather than distinguishing itself from the two major parties, the Tea Party is blending right in.